Hogar Baldrick

Hogar Baldrick, also called Hogarth Baldrick or Boldrick, is a baron of Mavi Koru in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"). He is the lord and patron of the soldier Leonard and his family, and the mage Castor served his house as mage adviser for three or four years.¹²³

Character and rise

Hogar is about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He inherited a small lordship from his father and is fond of military matters, politically clever and very ambitious. His position grew stronger through the deeds of the two men who served him: Castor, whose first post outside the Archon was as his mage adviser, and Leonard, who won fame and influence in the war beneath the earth.⁴

When Leonard's merchant family was ruined, Hogar took Leonard and his brother Richard under his protection; Leonard became his soldier after saving his life, and Richard his chief merchant. During the war he formally dismissed Leonard after Leonard chose to carry warning of an attack to the legion rather than rescue him, though they parted on good terms. The emperor stayed at his castle on the way to meet the elves.⁵⁶⁷⁸

Leonard and Castor remember darker days in his service: northerners who trusted him and came to his castle to make terms were killed at his wish and were later found to have been innocent.⁹

Leonard holds that Hogar's goodness comes from his own character, not from his noble birth. Traumir, the envoy of The Hand, counts House Baldrick among the few families whose loyalty his circle does not doubt.¹⁰¹¹

Patron of Luke

Hogar pays the schooling and expenses of Leonard's nephew Luke at the Archon, is known to send large sums there, and keeps him in a private room. Luke says the baron gives him more money than he can spend and bought him a horse. Luke means to return to his service as a mage after his examination, and has been accepted at the mages' tower in Mavi Hisar to be near his family.^1213141516

The student Mamor of House Edart, a baronial house of Batı Kalkanı whose arms show a dove with wings spread, says his house and House Boldrick are related from long ago.¹⁷¹⁸

The attempt on his life

One night Leonard broke down Hogar's barred door and found him on the floor with a poisoned dagger in his left shoulder and a pale, veiled, elf-like attacker in the room; Leonard's warning about poison let the physician save him. With Hogar's consent the witch hunters made the captive talk. Since no way in could be found, Hogar paid an independent mage tied to the Archon to set simple wards against sudden teleportation. The attack hardened him, and drew him closer to the man who had saved him.^19202122

Spoiler: The assassinRevealSpoils: Mürekkep ve Çelik #15 · Say what you have read

The attacker was said to be a shadow-kai, an elf-like being from the Shadowfell, described to Leonard as a demon from another realm. He was afterwards quietly done away with, without a public execution, so that the breach would not become known. Who sent him is not known.²¹

Nobles whose knightly sons had vanished came to Hogar by night and openly proposed treason, and he neither turned them away nor rebuked them, which troubled Leonard. When Leonard asked him about it, Hogar asked whom Leonard would obey if the baron himself turned against the emperor.²³²⁴²⁵

Spoiler: Hogar's letterRevealSpoils: Mürekkep ve Çelik #15 · Say what you have read

Hogar then handed Leonard a newly written, still unsealed letter in his own hand: a full list of everyone who had spoken with him, which he meant to send to White City. Not every war, he said, is won with the sword.²⁶

The Dwarf Gate

Warned by sources he would not share that the emperor's life might be in danger, Hogar set his army on a long march early, keeping the reason hidden even from his commanders, and gave out that they were bound for the elven border. Of all the emperor's banner lords, only Hogar answered his call at the Dwarf Gate. His forces came in behind the undead raised at the emperor's back, under the Red Raven banners, while he himself fought the enemy's elite knights.^272829303

Castor recognised his old lord among the commanders and, when smoke and the battle in the air kept Hogar from seeing the signal flags, teleported to him with the Golden Lion's order to reinforce the dwarves at the centre; Hogar had it carried out by horn, and most of his army went to the dwarves' aid. Later, bleeding from shoulder to belly, he cried to his commanders to protect His Majesty. When the enemy broke, he forbade pursuit.³¹³²³³

After the battle

Wounded, Hogar sent Leonard to lift the siege of Ravenhill. The family that rules Ravenhill paid him enough to build a castle, and he said it was thanks to Leonard. With it he built a new keep on the undefended north of his lands, at the forest edge guarding the trade road, and gave it to Leonard, whom he knighted with the family sword in his courtyard. He also suggested that the young smith Vulgar Yeşiltepe become Leonard's squire, as a sign that men can rise.^34353637

Hogar is spoken of as one of the important lords of Mavi Hisar and is said to be about to become an elector count. He is now the Commander of the Eastern Armies. At the palace celebration he was called away by Einhart Lorenz and left Leonard to represent his house; on his return he seemed to know what had happened and asked Leonard not to shame them.^38394041